


Cocoon

by sonictrowel



Series: Long Night in the Blue House [28]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Humor, Romance, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 06:20:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10588185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonictrowel/pseuds/sonictrowel
Summary: The Doctor felt like a complete knob. This sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen tonight. Tonight was supposed to be twenty-four years of good things, of making River happy every moment, making sure she knew he fucking adored her. And, when she wasn’t looking, figuring out how to save her.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was written almost simultaneously with the last installment and follows directly after, so here, have some fluff!

The Doctor felt like a complete knob.  This sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen tonight.  Tonight was supposed to be twenty-four years of good things, of making River happy every moment, making sure she knew he fucking _adored_ her.  And, when she wasn’t looking, figuring out how to save her.

In his defence, he’d been thrown for several very unexpected loops in the past few months.  He thought he handled the whole ‘secret future daughter’ thing rather well, considering.  When Milly left, they comforted each other, and he didn’t let the secret slip, as badly as he wanted to.

He handled the ‘realising said secret daughter was being pursued by some bloody-minded idiot Gallifreyans who just would not get over the fucking Hybrid thing’ bit a lot less gracefully.

He had to let this one go.  He had to.  Mils was her mother’s daughter.  He had to have faith in her that she could handle herself.  And he _would_ be there with her.  But he should have just listened to her and left it well enough alone, because it couldn’t be this him.  Hopefully, it was one who actually knew what the fuck he was doing.  And right now, he knew exactly what and where he needed to be, which was a decent fucking husband, right here with River.

He wished he had never figured it out, but there was no unringing that bell.  But it was only his own frayed nerves that were suffering, and this wasn’t about him. He needed to let it go, and trust her and himself to take care of it when the time came.  Easier said than done, but he had two weeks of self-indulgent arseholery to make up to his wife, and he just happened to know quite a lot of ways to apologise to her that would be doubly beneficial by completely distracting him from his anxious thoughts.

With a sleepy little moan, River began to stir beside him, stretching out her limbs and arching her back.

“Morning, honey,” the Doctor said quietly, smoothing his hand over her impressively dishevelled hair to absolutely no effect.

In the bluish-hued glow of the starlight filtering through the bedroom window, he saw her eyes flutter open, coming into focus as she moved from sleep to waking and her recent memory settled into place. Her face split into a smile and she rolled onto her side to face him.

“Morning, darling,” she mumbled.

River’s voice was a purely magical thing, like deep amber honey, or the rich ring of a bell; like she was always speaking to music. Truly, she’d been aptly named. But that special low, sleepy quality it had in the mornings, in all its implications of intimacy, tugged at his hearts the most. The Doctor smiled as he leaned in to kiss her.

“I was thinking,” he mumbled eventually, “maybe we could use another cocoon period.  To readjust.  To let me make it up to you.”

“Sweetie, you don’t have to—”

“Yes, I do.  I broke New Rule One, I broke my promise to you, and I’m not just going to let it go.  It means too much.   _You_ mean too much, River.”  He gripped her hand in his, and she smiled softly at him, her brows drawn together and eyes shining.

“I wasted our time, and didn’t even come back to my senses til you knocked some into me.  I don’t want to let you out of my sight until I set it right; til you feel like you should feel with me.  Like you did before I made a cock-up of it.  Again.”

“Darling, I don’t feel differently about you because we had a couple of bad weeks, or a row,” River said gently.

“No, that’s not what I mean.”  He paused, eyes searching her face.  “Our whole marriage, you didn’t know I loved you.  And I can’t change that now, but I’ll regret it for the rest of my lives.”

“Oh, sweetie.  I should’ve known.  And sometimes— a lot of times, I did know."  She reached her free hand up to run her fingers through his hair.  "You showed me over and over.  You told me the day I met you, and nothing’s ever changed my life like those words.  This,” she squeezed his hand, “was the first time I got to choose, and I chose to love you.  I chose a future with you.  If you didn’t love me, if I didn’t believe in that, neither of us would even be here.”  Her smile was bittersweet but warm.

The Doctor frowned. “And even after all that, I made you stop believing it.  That’s my fault, River.  And I’ll not let you doubt it ever again.”

“I know now,” she whispered.

“You could know it better,” he said, staring into her bright eyes in the starlight.  “Tonight is just for us.  No one else in the universe gets to make any demands on my time.  I am completely yours, River, and I am going to make _really_ fucking properly sure you know exactly how much I respect you and admire you, and, and how humbled I am that for some fucking reason you decided to go along with marrying me, and how proud I am that you’re my wife—”

She was crying now, but he was pretty sure she was still smiling and not just grimacing, so he kissed her hand and her cheek and the corner of her mouth and continued, his voice softening as he smiled at her.

“—And how utterly, hopelessly in love with you I am; how the only thing I want in the whole sodding universe is to be with you and make you happy until the day I die for good.  And, I’ll remind you, I’d’ve probably swallowed my tongue trying to get all this out, but I grew up because I wanted to be better for you— only it, uh, sort of went pear-shaped when you weren’t there.  But the first time this face met you, I sorted out who I was again, and it was a pretty goddamn huge surprise when that turned out to be someone who could laugh and be happy and maybe even be good, and, and love like fucking _mad—_  and that’s all because of you.”

River sniffled quietly, smiling as he wiped her tears away with his thumb.

“...These _are_ the happy kind, right?” he asked under his breath.

She laughed suddenly, a sort of wet half-sob, but she was grinning at him and nodding and pulling his face toward hers.

“So then,” the Doctor said when their lips finally parted, “my dear— clever—” he placed a warm kiss on her skin between each word, moving from her cheek to her neck, “kind— brave— selfless— brilliant— strong— patient— gorgeous— loving— formidable wife,” he finished by paying special attention to the soft skin at hollow of her throat, and she shivered.  “Any objections to me keeping you in bed and showering you with affection until we’re both satisfied I’ve made it up to you?”

“Well, darling,” she said breathlessly, “I’d be a fool to refuse.”

“Too right,” he smirked, moving his lips slowly down over her chest.  “And I know you're no fool, honey.”

___

It wasn’t until quite a while later that the Doctor emerged to retrieve tea and— what time was it? lunch?— his ears still ringing pleasantly with his wife’s magical, melodic voice.  He’d devoted all of his energy that morning to getting her to _sing_ as many times as possible, and he was just a bit pleased with himself.  He hummed a tune under his breath as he strolled into the kitchen, and he was so shocked by the sight of the little bald man at the sink he nearly regenerated on the spot.

He sort of completely forgot they didn’t live alone anymore.  Oh, shite— no, okay, he had a sheet awkwardly and haphazardly bunched up and tied around his hips, so at least he wasn’t totally… well.

“Uh, Nardole. Hi, uh… mate.”

“Dr. Song’s finally stopped your tantrum, then?” he remarked casually, not looking away from the washing-up.  
  
The Doctor cleared his throat. “Ah.  Yep.  For the moment.”

There was, at least for the Doctor, a deeply uncomfortable pause.

“Yeah, uh, about that.  Sorry for all the... being a dick.”

“‘S alright, I could tell you had a lot on your mind,” Nardole replied as he dried a dish.

“That’s very… magnanimous of you.”

Nardole turned around from the sink and started, apparently noticing the Doctor’s disheveled state of undress for the first time.

“So, I’ll just go and um— I‘ve got a thing,” he mumbled quickly.

“Right, yep, see you,” the Doctor said, studying the ceiling as Nardole fled the kitchen.

He crept back to the bedroom with a tray of tea and sandwiches twenty minutes later, slipping through door with a loudly whispered “Did you remember someone else still lives here?!  The hell were we thinking him on?”

“Oh, poor Nardole!” River cried, between fits of laughter.


End file.
